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GW and GW2 and ncsoft...
tavoc
Member UncommonPosts: 257
Ill just make thsi short and simple.. while reading alot of posts (expecialy durring the most anticipared of 2011 award.) Ive seen way too many people posting about how they will not play GW2 because its a 'ncsoft game' so on so forth. Also refering to guild wars as a korean mmo blah blah blah.
The truth? Guild wars, as with Guild wars 2 are games deveoped by ARENANET, not ncsoft.
Ncsoft= publisher for arenanet
Arenanet= Developer
How hard is that to understand!
Also, arenanet is not a korean company, it is not a eastern company, Arenanet is a AMERICAN company located in WASHINGON, not washington DC, but washing ton state.
Edit: Aparently i need to put in more information.
Arena net is its own company as for devlopemtn and desision whise of how they want to do. While the are Ownd by Ncsoft, Ncsoft gives Arenanet complete freedom, anet can delay,change, or basicly do whatever THEY want with the game and ncsoft buts out.. Why? because thats the reason why ncsoft bought anet in the first place.
Basicly their relationship is like this, Anet makes a game, Ncsoft funds anet to make the game, and publishes the game. Game hits the shelves money comes in, anet gets paid, so does ncsoft, much like investers.
The only difereance is that the company is technicly ownd by ncsoft. Oh and by the way! the only reason Ncsoft aquired Anet is because western game companies didnt know that a mmo with no subs could work.
Also, ANET is still a western company, its an american company ownd by a foreign company.. much like some gas stations
Comments
http://www.arena.net/contact/
this is for anyone who doubts the truth.
ArenaNet is owned by NCsoft. Not figuratively owned, owned as in acquired, paid for in cash. ArenaNet is part of NC West.
Arenanet is a wholly owned subsidiary, they are nothing but a division within NCsoft that has it's own name for tax purposes. They ARE NCSoft, end of story.
This is going to be one very long thread...anyway, even though Anet is owned by NC, their development practices are different and Anet know what the American market wants. Anet has mentioned that they have been given creative freedom on their game project and that this kind of freedom is rare and they are grateful for it. I think that's what the OP was trying to convey here... now I shall move out before the uninformed people get here.
This is not a game.
What you said is spot on. Arenanet is owned by NCSoft and they've said that they've been given total control.
Now to play devil's advocate here. NCSoft is in charge. You might not like it, but it's true. Arenanet might be telling the truth that their boss is letting them do whatever they want, but they'd have to say that anyways. No company is going to say their boss is making them make horrible decisions. Bottom line is whether NCSoft gets involved is NCSoft's call and not Arenanets. So when people say it's NCSoft's game they are correct. Those that say it's Arenanet's game is also correct. But the fate of the game rests in NCSoft's hands not Arenanets. Arenanet is just making a product for NCSoft. That's how the real world works.
If people object to NC Soft, then it depends on why they object. If people believe that NC Soft is an evil publisher that will force games to launch before they are ready, and then eliminate funding so that the problems can't be fixed, then that would be a problem, as they could force ArenaNet to do that. If people believe that NC Soft will develop stereotypical Korean item mall grinders that border on child porn and have those stupid looking one-pixel-thick fonts blown up and displayed in 3D over players heads, then that's not relevant because NC Soft isn't the developer and doesn't make those decisions.
I have the impression that NC Soft is pretty hands off with ArenaNet, and mostly lets ArenaNet do what they want. They know full well that ArenaNet delivered a big hit on a small budget with Guild Wars 1, and if a hands-off approach from the publisher will lead to another big hit, they don't want to mess that up.
Hopefully after the failure that was Aion in the west and the success of Guild Wars in the West, we can hope that NCSoft will just keep its head in the sand and pay the bills while ArenaNet gets left to work in peace.
My Guild Wars 2 Vids
NCSoft owns Arenanet. Trion is having UBI Soft publish Rift in Europe for them. That's a more accurate description of what you've said here. NCSoft oversees Arenanet. Arenanet has a budget that NCSoft ultimately approves. Arenanet makes product and NCSoft puts it out there. Both companies share in profits.
I'm not saying this will happen, BUT part of Mythic's failure has been laid on EA's doorstep for this very reason. EA gave Mythic all the time they needed, til they decided they wanted the game to make money. They forced WAR out unfinished because of EA. Ya know, the publisher whom happens to own them, whom happens to be the one to make the ultimate decisions.
I think that might be the part you're missing from people who raise concerns about NCSoft. Like I said though there's no proof that they'll do that, so I'd start your discussion from that point instead. It's much stronger.
I'm pretty sure the 3.5 million asians who play the game are far overshadowing anything that you might be calling a failure in the west.
I think it deals with more of the context people use it in. In general, people who wish to bash the game use NCsoft's not-so-great track record against it but the thing is they never really played much of a role in GW except for funding. Even in GW1 you could play GW without an NC account. Yes, its owned by NC, yes they can make decisions if they want to but I don't think they will especially when the decisions Anet made for GW1 (without NC interference) made NC quite a bit of cash and continues to till this day.
This is not a game.
Not worth the explination. Honestly, the game community will ultimately be better without the people who can't get it through their thick heads that ArenaNet and NCsoft are two different entities and that GW has never been a "korean grinder", or even remotely related to Korea at all.
on ANET's When It's Ready blog, we get a hint of ANET's working relationship with NCSOFT regarding GW2:
For example, if you know you absolutely have to ship a game by a particular date, you often have to make some very tough decisions. Do you cut content? Do you maybe cut a profession? Or a race? A lot of games have had to make those choices. The thing is, we don’t want to do any of those things and we are in a position where we don’t have to. That’s not a luxury that every developer can afford. In fact, most can’t. The reason we can afford to do this is because NCSoft believes in us as a developer and believes in Guild Wars 2 as a game. One of the major reasons they believe so strongly in us is in large part due to all of our fans. The support that you’ve given Guild Wars in the past and the support that you show for Guild Wars 2 now has been amazing.
Have fun storming the castle! - Miracle Max
My biggest reason for playing Tera is because its a game that spits in the face of Ncsoft. After playing Lineage 2 for many years, I have seen how shady Ncsoft west is on so many different levels.They do not care about their player base at all just money.
They could have stopped bots and ebaying many years ago in Lineage 2 but they were always very selective on who got banned and who didnt because the farmers were making them rich by paying many subs to run trains of bots. Now that Lineage 2 is on its last leg they decide to clean up the game and start banning when most who cheated dont need to anymore and wont ever be punished.
Just a dirty company imo and it upsets me because Lineage 2 could have been so much more and now its practically dead. I hope Tera puts the final nail in its coffin because i loved that game and its sad that ncsoft starts monitoring cheating so late in the game when all the damage is already done.
oh and GW2??? yawn
This^^^^ is GW2 supporters strongest point. I'm (obviously) on the 'believe it when I see it' side of this game, BUT for the NCSoft part of it - this is really good.
well he is right though. it did fail in the west. I don't really get your point, unless you mean that NCSoft doesn't care about western profits. considering that they are a business, I would say that they do.
They're not two different entities. One is a parent company of another. They are tied to each other. Two different entities would be Pepsi and Coke or Sony and Microsoft.
How many users did they project to have in the west? Oh, that's right, you have no idea. therefor, you also have no idea whether or not it was a failure. 3.5 million players makes them one of the biggest p2p's in existence... I hardly think they're dissapointed.
Everything you just said is nonsense in relation to what this thread is about. Aion failed in the west to argue otherwise is spin. They lost A LOT of customers in the west due to lack of communication/support in the west.
3.5 million in Korea? you know this how?
"On September 10, 2008, NCsoft announced that all their North American and European subsidiaries, including ArenaNet, were to be governed by a new division named NC West (a tentative name), headquartered in Seattle, Washington.[5] ArenaNet will no longer report directly to NCsoft Korea.[6] Three of ArenaNet's executives left ArenaNet to assume leadership positions in this new organization: Chris Chung became its CEO, Jeff Strain its president, and Patrick Wyatt its CTO. Guild Wars 2 will continue under the direction of Mike O'Brien, who remains at ArenaNet.[6] In August 2009, Jeff Strain quit and later announced he was forming a new game company."
ArenaNET is pretty much guarded by NC West and NC Korea wouldn't stick their noses in a market they don't know very well ( also NC West seems to be in good professional hands). Also note that Carbine Studios (Aliso Viejo, Californiia), another developer owned by NC, is working on an unannounced title since 2005. If they didn't rush ArenaNET and Carbine with the global economic crisis going on, i don't think they will do it anytime soon.
Just be quiet for now, haters and non-believers. Save your precious words for release.
Playing: Starcraft II.
Played: Tibia, Ragnarok Online, Ultima Online, Guild Wars, World of Warcraft.
Wanna play: Guild Wars 2, SW:TOR, Final Fantasy XIV, Diablo III.
Does this matter? It's the same relationship that NCSoft has with City of heroes and I don't think that game is korean.
It's also not the same relationship. Actually it's completely different.
Cryptic is owned by Atari. When Cryptic sold its rights to CoH/CoV to NCSoft people left Cryptic to go form a subsidary Paragon Studios. When CoH came out Cryptic was the developer and NCSoft was the publisher and didn't 'own' Cryptic and never has.
Here's a link for you on the atari acquisition...
http://massively.joystiq.com/2008/12/09/atari-acquires-cryptic-studios/
While i completly hate the idiots frmo NC Soft, i have hope that ArenaNet will release a good game(GW2). The only problem i have with them is that they sold their company to NC Soft, which in long term it will hurt them, but they will learn the hard way.
As for history of NC Soft, well most of the players know that it's a horrible, shady company that should be banned from West, Europe.
Last time I checked server mergers were not indicative of a games flashing success. I also made it a point to say West, not East which is where all the Asian players would be. NCSoft needed to adapt the game for western audiences and they failed to do so, resulting in an exodus of players and leading to the server mergers. If NCSoft West could not alter and market an already popular and in house designed game like Aion, they need to stay hands off with Guild Wars 2 and leave its design to the ones who managed to sell over 6 million of Guild Wars.
My Guild Wars 2 Vids